Those glasses were such a nuisance to Jimmy, always sliding down his nose, going crooked on his face.

But he needed them. This 5-8, 160-pound kid could "knock the eyes out of a basket." His opponent said exactly those words for the newspaper after a sectional game.

So, Jimmy wore the glasses — he was almost blind without them — and he broke the glasses. Jimmy went through 15 pairs at Fairmount High School by the time he graduated in 1949, said Wes Gehring, author of "James Dean: Rebel With a Cause."

Jimmy was an aggressive and intense perfectionist on the court. When a foul was called on him that he thought unfair, he would yank off those glasses and hurl them to the floor.

Another broken pair.

Another mark of a young man who — if he was going to do something — was going to do it grandly, with a fire inside.

Known as Jimmy Dean, he batted .333 on his American Legion Baseball team and played all four years as third baseman for Fairmount High.(Photo: Provided by James Dean Estate)

Jimmy would later become known to the world as James, his given first name — James Dean. The heartthrob of "Rebel Without a Cause" and "East of Eden."

And most people would never know of Jimmy, the three-letter sports star of Fairmount High — the boy in glasses competing in basketball, baseball and track — setting school records and earning the top-athlete medal his senior year. Playing basketball in college.

Lost in his flash of acting genius, buried beneath his dangling-cigarette and sex-symbol facade and overshadowed by a horrific car crash on a dusky evening in California, is a side of Dean that to this day few know about.

Jimmy Dean, the star athlete.

Childhood tragedy led to sports

There was no hospital room when James Byron Dean, the son of a dental technician and a farmer's daughter, Winton A. and Mildred Wilson Dean, was born. Dean's mother gave birth to him in the Seven Gables apartment house in Marion, Ind., on Feb. 8, 1931.

Shortly after, the family moved to Fairmount and, when Dean was five, to California, according to records at the Fairmount Historical Museum.

Dean was extraordinarily close with his mother, who doted on her only son. At night, she would have Dean write a wish on a piece of paper and put it under his pillow. The next day, she would do her best to make that wish come true.

James Dean with his mother, Mildred, who died when he was 9.(Photo: Provided by James Dean Estate)

They weren't grandiose requests. They were the wonderful, small stuff life is made of: get an ice cream cone, read a book together, have a friend over to the house.

It was a heartbreaking blow when Dean's mother died of cancer when he was 9. His father sent him back to Indiana to live with his aunt and uncle, Marcus and Ortense Winslow, on their farm north of Fairmount, said Dorothy Schultz, a board member at the museum.

Hidden in that childhood tragedy, though, would be a path that led to something great. Uncle Marcus would set Dean's love of sports in motion.

"He was a good athlete in very large part because of his uncle Marcus, who took him in," said Gehring, professor of telecommunications at Ball State University. "Marcus encouraged the sports, even spoiled him."

Inside the massive barn on the Winslow farm, Marcus set up two basketball hoops. He also concocted a pole vaulting pit for Dean. And on the property's pond, he found a way to add lighting so on winter nights, Dean and his friends could play hockey.

James Dean, age 9, in front of the Winslow farmhouse, his home from 1940 to 1949. This is one of several never-before-published images in the book "James Dean."(Photo: James Dean Estate)

"No one knows for sure if his uncle was an athlete," said Gehring. "But you can be pretty sure his uncle, who was really like his dad, gave him tricks for shooting and batting and made it possible for him to become great at these sports."

Dean was a quiet, timid and bashful kid when Jim Grindle met him in fourth grade. But as he burgeoned in his teenage years, he gained confidence.

"He was usually good at about anything he tried," said Grindle, who played on the Fairmount Quakers basketball team with Dean, in a 2011 interview with JATVMedia.

And Dean tried a lot of different things in high school — drama, art, debate and band. At his graduation in May 1949, Dean received the top award for art and others for drama, not surprising for the Dean the world remembers.

But he also received a medal inscribed with these words: "Jimmy Dean, Fairmount High's Top Athlete of the Year."

Record-setting star

His best sport, Gehring said, was basketball. "And it was his favorite sport."

Inside the barn, on those cold winter Sunday afternoons in Grant County, Dean would hone his basketball skills.

The barn was crowded with equipment and hay and old pickups and there wasn't a clear path for shooting, but that didn't matter.

"You played basketball. You’d play anywhere," said Grindle. "We had some rough games out there. Great times."

Dean's best shot would be considered a three-pointer today. He liked shooting from the outside, a two-handed set shot. Those days in the barn paid off; Dean was the second-leading scorer at Fairmount his senior year.

James Dean played basketball at Fairmount High School.(Photo: File Photo)

One of Dean's best games came that year in the sectional finals, playing against county rival Marion — a perennial powerhouse in the state. Fairmount lost to the Giants 40-34, but to come so close was unheard of for Fairmount. Dean scored 15 of the Quakers' 34 points and was the leading scorer in all three sectional games.

"Jimmy was really the star of the game," the late Earl Conn told Gehring for his book. Conn was a journalist in Grant County before becoming professor and telecommunications dean at Ball State. "He was the thorn in the side of Marion."

His coach Paul Weaver called Dean, "a heady player and a good competitor," said Schultz, who has done extensive research on Dean.

Next to his yearbook basketball photo, it read: "Dean, a brilliant senior guard was one of the main cogs in the Quakers' starting lineup this season. (He) was rated as one of the most outstanding guards in the county."

James Dean set the Grant County pole vault record at Fairmount High, which he held for several years.(Photo: Fairmount Historical Museum)

And not just outstanding in basketball. Dean held the Grant County record for pole vaulting, though his height isn't recorded. Grindle said he thinks it was 10-foot-something. Dean also ran on the half-mile relay team and competed in hurdles.

He played third base for Fairmount and was a solid batter. Outside of the school team, he played American Legion Baseball where he had a batting average of .333.

Aside from his school sports, Dean also grew up loving auto racing. The passion was rooted when his Methodist minister, James DeWeerd, took him to an Indianapolis 500 race as a boy.

"Like everything else, he did it full tilt," said Gehring. "He brought to sports the same kind of intensity he brought to acting."

Sports were a necessity in his life

Once out of high school and moved to California, Dean majored in physical education at Santa Monica City College and was good enough to play basketball his freshman year for coach Samuel Crumpacker.

"He was concise, authoritative, perceptive and alert to all that was around him (on the court)," Crumpacker said of Dean, according to Schultz's research.

But one practice, Crumpacker saw Dean come in looking confused and downtrodden. He had failed a screen test at a studio. Acting was where his heart was.

By the time his freshman year was over, Dean transferred to UCLA to major in theater arts. Even in the midst of a rapidly accelerating acting career, Dean's love of sports remained.

"Rugged sports were a necessity in his life. Often at Warner Brothers Studio, he would spar with an athletic coach," Fairmount Historical Museum records say.

One of his friends who was into fencing -- and had been at the sport for years -- said Dean once told him he wanted to try the sport.

"And he nearly beat him," said Schultz. "He just had to be the best at everything."

Including racing.

A cruel twist of fate

With a little money and the passion still burning, Dean took up auto racing. He purchased his first Porsche, a 356 Super Speedster, in February 1955 and raced it at three California events, said Lee Raskin, who has written two Dean publications that are at the Fairmount museum.

In September that same year, he bought another Porsche, a 550 Spyder. That Spyder would be the car Dean was driving when he died in a crash at the age of 24.

It's a cruel twist of fate that his love of sports — in this case racing cars — ultimately led to his death.

"He was very interested in racing and participated in four or five races and (did) very well," Dean's cousin, Marcus Winslow, Jr., said in a YouTube video about Dean. "For an amateur racer, he did excellent."

Dean placed first or second in all of his contests. And it was on his way to a race in Salinas, Calif., in his Spyder that Dean would die.

James Dean in his Porsche Spyder, which he owned for nine days before he died in it.(Photo: Provided by Lee Raskin)

"They were going to take the car by trailer," Winslow, Jr., said. "But at the last minute (Dean) and the mechanic decided to just drive the Spyder up to get more miles, more experience with it before the race."

It was late in the day and the sun was sinking. A car coming from the opposite direction made a left-hand turn in front of Dean. Dean's low, silver car blended in with the horizon.

"The other driver just simply didn't see Jimmy coming," said Winslow Jr. "It was a '54 Sedan. The aluminum Spyder just didn't have a chance against that heavy car. I think he was pretty much killed instantly."

Dean died on Sept. 30, 1955. The other driver and Dean's mechanic survived.

The next day, a special edition rolled off the presses of The Fairmount News. "In Memory of James Dean" topped the front page in thick black letters. A photo of Dean's chiseled, fresh face was the top photo.

Just one other photo interrupted the mounds of text on the page.

To the rest of the world, it was an almost unrecognizable Dean leaning forward in thick glasses holding a basketball. Next to the photo were two simple words: "Basketball star."

To the people of Fairmount, that is exactly who Jimmy was.

"He was not a rebel," said Grindle. "Jimmy was an ordinary person with a tremendous amount of talent. A very good athlete."